A 34-year-old man in Pennsylvania man will spend the rest of his days behind bars for killing his 43-year-old “friend and business partner” before burying her body in a “shallow grave.” A Montgomery County jury on Wednesday found Blair Watts guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Jennifer Brown, authorities announced.
According to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, following the jury’s verdict, County Judge William R. Carpenter “immediately” ordered Blair to serve a mandatory sentence of life in a state correctional facility.
Blair Antonio Watts (Montgomery County DA’s Office)
Watts did not testify during the six-day trial or address the court during the sentencing phase of the hearing. However, as he was being led out of the courtroom by sheriff’s deputies, he briefly addressed a gaggle of reporters, saying, “I didn’t kill Jennifer Brown,” local news website The Mercury reported.
First Assistant District Attorney Edward F. McCann Jr. responded to Watts’ exiting comments.
“He’s been saying that from the beginning but we just spent five days proving that he did and I think we proved it beyond any doubt. Frankly, I don’t really think reasonable doubt was even an issue. I think the case was very strong,” McCann reportedly said. “Clearly, the jury considered this thoroughly. Clearly, the evidence that he did it was overwhelming.”
Per The Mercury, McCann and Deputy District Attorney Kelly S. Lloyd repeatedly referred to Watts as a “broke narcissist” throughout the trial, arguing he killed Brown because she was going to expose his illicit use of funds she had invested with Watts for a proposed restaurant venture.
“In court, I characterized him as a manipulator who lied and he was trying to hide on the surface who he was underneath, a broke narcissist who was always concerned about himself and his own image,” Lloyd reportedly said. “I think that came out through the testimony and through all the evidence we showed in this case.”
The investigation into Brown’s disappearance began when Watts himself reported her missing on Jan. 4, 2023. Prosecutors said that Watts was Brown’s “supposed friend and business partner” in the planned reopening of a restaurant called “Birdie’s Kitchen.”
Watts told police that Brown’s 8-year-old special-needs son had spent the previous evening at his house for a planned sleepover with his three kids in order to “give Brown a break,” but Brown failed to pick up her son from the school bus the following afternoon.
At the time, authorities noted it was strange that Brown, who others described as an “attentive and loving mother,” had failed to provide Watts with her son’s “necessary daily medications” or new clothes for the boy to wear to school after the sleepover.
Jennifer Brown (Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office)
An initial search of Brown’s home showed “no obvious signs of a struggle,” and the only significant personal item missing was her cellphone, police said. But a K-9 unit cadaver dog trained to detect the presence of human remains was brought into the residence and “indicated in the kitchen area of Brown’s residence as well as by a trash dumpster outside of Brown’s townhouse,” prosecutors said.
When investigators searched the specific area inside the home where the cadaver dog first indicated, they found “several black-and-white, marble-patterned plastic pieces embedded within the high-pile carpet” that were later determined to be pieces of a hair clip found buried in the shallow grave with Brown’s body.
The same dog later indicated that human remains had been in two cars driven by Watts, police said.
The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office on Jan. 19 conducted an autopsy on Brown’s body and a toxicology analysis, determining that her cause of death was a homicide by “unspecified means,” prosecutors said. The autopsy report also noted that Brown had suffered three broken ribs prior to her death.
Investigators say they soon learned that in the late afternoon of Jan. 3, Watts picked up Brown’s son from the bus stop and told the boy that his mother was at the grocery store and that and he would be sleeping over at Watts’ house that evening.
The two then drove to Brown’s home and Watts went inside while Brown’s son waited in the car, police said. But when Watts returned to the car, the child allegedly told police he noticed that Watts was holding his mother’s cellphone — which he recognized because the phone’s lock screen was the child’s own school photo.
Additionally, authorities say that cellphone data showed Brown and Watts’ phones “traveling in tandem” away from Brown’s home at around that time before returning a short while later, and again the next morning in the area of North Lewis Road and West Ridge Pike at approximately 7 a.m. before Brown’s phone became inactive.
Authorities also investigated the planned joint business venture between Watts and Brown, saying they found a number of red flags.
According to investigators, the two entered into a partnership agreement on Aug. 28, 2022, in which Brown agreed to invest funds in Watts’ restaurant, Birdie’s Kitchen, which they planned to open earlier this year. It would have been a relaunch for Brown’s restaurant, which had previously struggled during the coronavirus pandemic, and, according to Facebook posts, shut down for good in July 2022.
“Detectives found that on the afternoon of Jan. 3, 2023, the day before Brown was reported missing, two cash transfers were made to accounts controlled by Watts,” prosecutors said following Watts’ arrest. “CashApp records show a transfer of $9,000 went through to ‘$Birdieskitchen’ at 4:23 p.m. A second transfer of $8,000 via Zelle was completed at 4:35 p.m. to ‘Birdies.’ This total of $17,000 was never part of a written agreement between Brown and Watts.”
When police spoke with the owners of the proposed Phoenixville property, they told detectives that they had met with Watts last year about renting the storefront, but had “never signed a lease with Watts, received money from Watts or gave Watts a key to the property,” prosecutors say. On Dec. 28, 2022, one of the owners told Watts they would not be moving forward with the lease. Watts allegedly responded by threatening to sue.
However, on Jan. 4, 2022, the property owners told police that Watts “showed up at the property unannounced, ‘now saying he had money to put down on a lease,’” prosecutors wrote in a news release.
“For 37 days since this devoted mother was reported missing, detectives have been accumulating evidence, piece by piece, bringing into focus what happened to Jennifer and who murdered her,” Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said in a statement in February. “That picture shows Blair Watts murdered Jennifer Brown on Jan. 3rd, then moved her body and ultimately buried her in a shallow grave. He is now behind bars at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility.”
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Watts in January 2023 appeared insulted by the suggestion that he could have anything to do with Brown’s disappearance.
“It seems like I’m being the one poked at,” he said in response to questions from reporters. “And it’s frustrating because I’m the first person that was the one calling the police, trying to kick down windows. Trying to find my friend. Trying to make sure her son is covered.”
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